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Tomato Toast

Zwieback toast topped with a thickened tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Tomato Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Moisten the zwieback slices in hot cream.

  2. Heat the strained stewed tomato to boiling.

  3. Thicken the tomato with corn starch or flour mixed with a little cold water.

  4. Season with salt and add hot cream if desired.

Serve

  1. Serve the tomato sauce over the moistened zwieback.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Tomato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Cream + corntop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Cream + tomatotop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Zwieback
Absorbs the hot cream and forms the soft base that holds the sauce.
Strained stewed tomato
Provides the main flavor and liquid that becomes the sauce.
Corn starch or flour
Thickens the tomato liquid into a smooth, coating sauce when heated.
Hot cream
Adds richness and softens the zwieback, giving a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Thicken the tomato. Starch must be mixed smoothly with cold water before adding it to hot tomato, otherwise it clumps. It thickens only as it heats, so the sauce should be kept at a boil briefly to reach full thickness.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, corn):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, corn. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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